Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

DROSS COMPATIBILITY
NewTek have made a lot of noise about ensuring
LightWatt wilt have a standard interface and functionality
across the board, whether it be Amiga, PC SG) or
whatever else. And to be fair, that's exactly what they've
achieved
The only real difference on an operational level is the
inabikty to import and export models between Modeler
and Layout As mentioned, the vast majority of PCs don't
truly multitask, therefore it's not an option - even under
Windows 95. This inevitably means an awful lot of
saving countless revisions of the same design.
Yet another simple, but nevertheless
essential change is the redesign of the preview
window. In the past. Modeler boasted a rather
overindulgent moving solid preview option.
There's no doubt it looks impressive, but in
practice it simply wasted CPU time, served no
practical purpose, and most importantly, soon
became very irritating.
PREVIEWS
Fortunately, NewIek have finally done the
decent thing and added a usable, static, solid
preview selection to the existing options, thereby
providing a much more informative range of
display options. In 3.5 the selection varied
• between none, static, and moving - in either
mreframe or solid. Now that collection has
expanded with none, wireframe, Frontlace and
solid - either moving or otherwise. As you'd
expect, the wireframe option works as before,
showing both the internal polygon structure
and the points.
Next up comes the new Front
iglich, - as the name suggests, shows only the
external face polygons o p tof ithe o nobject
However, as
you can see from the screenshot it also allows
you to see external surfaces within the object -
that at present may be obscured from the
existing viewpoint
Lastly comes the static solid view which, not
surprisingly, works just like Frontface, but delivers
a true solid 3D image of the model, It must
be said this is slightly slower to update than
the others, but in my opinion this is a small
• Th. cla ssic confusion of old style wire fra mo pre vie w.
it's only re st sa ving gra ce I s the a bility to ma ke point
and polygon se le ctions from the pre vie w window
saving, quitting and reloading when making adjustments
to the design and surface properties of your
creations. However, given sufficient RAM, it is possible to
load both Layout and Modeler, make your changes in
one, save them out to disk, hop over to the other
program, and load in the saved changes.
On the PC plus side, it must be said that actual screen
update on the PC version is superior - given a decent
64-bit graphics card When compared to the irnplemen•
tation of the higher resolution displays of the Picasso
"Fortunately, NewTek
have finally done the
decent thing and added a
usable, static, solid
preview selection to the
existing options"
price to pay for the added clarity a solid - and
stable - true 3D preview can provide.
Unfortunately for PC fans, combined
moving and static display options are only
available to the Amiga version. Because PCs
can't multitask a window in window animated
display simply isn't an option.
Like their predecessor, all the display
options offer the same orientation control,
with wireframe still requiring a combination of
the Alt key and mouse movement in order to
rotate the object along any axis to generate
the optimum view point
The only other obvious change to Modeler
is the arrival of a brand new button in the
Tools department Basically, this is Modelees
very own plug-ins option which awaits under
the new Tools/custom button.
At first glance you could easily make the
mistake that the Custom selection is just
A boring scre e n gra b
It ma y be . H owe ve r.
it's a n impre ssive
•sample of the e xce lle nt
colle ction of fre e bie
objects tha t ship with the
CD ve rsion of the
softwa re
Logo (Xr)
NOP
Side (ZY)
Vehicle
AMIGA COMPUTING
MAY 1996
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favoured on the Amiga version, the PC wins hands
down. However, it must be said that the Picasso update
and display options in general have improved quite
dramatically since the initial beta release.
Aside from the resolution, the PC variant also offers a
different approach to render previews. Unlike the Amiga,
which uses multitasking to provide a full frame preview
in either Ham, Ham8, or Picasso IL the PC opts for a
small quarter-screen display within a pop-up requester
in addition to a full screen alternative
1
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another incarnation of ARexx macros.
However, there is a very distinct difference
between the two, Basically, the Custom
options are standalone programs which, just
like Layout plug-ins, allow third-party develop.
ers to plug dedicated modelling applications
directly into the Modeler interface.
At present the package only ships with five
custom programs - the most notable, Powerview,
provides a solid quick render of the
preview display. Unfortunately, the option is
limited to a one-off full frame preview which
has to be closed down before you can continue
modelling, although you can still rotate
the preview by dragging the mouse.
Although limited at present it does point
the way to some interesting possibilities when
it comes to automated modelling. It remains
to be seen if Modeler custom programs get
the same level of attention as their Layout
plug-in counterparts - personally I doubt it..
P • • P I at, Opt t
Nona
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Frontloce
Sot itt
411124x768) PI C ASSO:1 8 2 4 x7 6 8
Unit Syste n lipid U nits
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('netlish
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None
St a nda rd
r tilte d
Points H e r n i a s
rat•o O r td
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Chanyi-
Acce ss to the a ll ne w pre vie w mode s, but pe rha ps more importa nt a se le ction
of off the Pica sso it's displa y mode s. 1 0 2 4 X7 6 8 is the be st of the bunch with a
combina tion of e xce lle nt re solution a nd re a sona ble scre e n upda te
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